The day was mostly positive as the Dow rose 19 points on average volume.  The advance/declines were positive.  The summation index has turned back up.  The NASDAQ was lower though.  I sold my SPY February puts for an 85% loss.  This was a dumb trade as with less than two days to go when I entered it required that things practically had to go perfect for it to work.  That never happens in the trading game.  I don't know what I was thinking because before the trade was executed, I thought numerous times to just cancel the order.  But I didn't and I paid the price.  I do think that next week will have some weakness and I can almost guarantee it.  We're short term overbought.  The premiums on the SPY March calls are still pretty high since we are just rolling into that months options.  I'm not saying that we are going to see another collapse but I do think that we'll be lower in the coming days.  GE gained 20 cents and the short term indicators here have turned up.  I am still considering the March calls here.  If we do see weakness in the overall market it will probably take GE with it.  That would be the time to try this idea.  Gold lost $5 on the futures as the US dollar was higher.  The XAU fell 2 1/4, while GDX dropped 1/2.  Volume was average.  Mentally I'm feeling OK.  I'm hoping that I won't lose any confidence after the latest losing trade.  Actually both trades that I've attempted so far this year haven't been the greatest ideas in the world.  The fact that one of them was a winner was probably more luck than actual good tactics.  The battle for me is always with myself in this game.  The market is there for the taking if you are good enough.  My view here is that we'll be heading lower at some point next week.  Whether or not we go back and test the lows remains to be seen.  I do not think that we will be heading back up to new all time highs.  I'm hearing in the media that this was a normal 10% correction and that the bull market remains in place.  It's possible that could be the case.  No major up trend lines have been violated.  However I'm more of the view that a top is being put in place and the long bull market is over.  I could be wrong.  Just because that is my view doesn't mean that we go straight down from here.  And it doesn't mean that trying the calls is out of the question either.  The market goes where it wants.  After seeing the market go straight up, we saw it go straight down.  Going out from here isn't going to have the same dynamic that we just witnessed.  I'm going to try and take the signals as they come and hopefully not engage in the dumb action that I just did over the past couple of days.  I should have sat it out and remained patient.  But I'm going to try and not dwell on that mistake over the weekend.  I'll need to find the next trade.  Europe and Asia were again positive overnight.  It's a long weekend in the US.  Plenty of time to figure out what to do going forward.  For now it's Friday afternoon and time for a break.